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Afrikaans phonology
Afrikaans has a similar phonology or pronunciation to other West Germanic languages, especially Dutch. Vowels Afrikaans has an extensive vowel inventory consisting of 17 monophthong phonemes (including 7 marginal ones) and 7 diphthong phonemes. Monophthongs Close * As phonemes, and occur only in the words spieël 'mirror' and koeël 'bullet', which used to be pronounced with sequences and , respectively. In other cases, they occur as allophones of and before . * (phonetically , }}) are higher than the unstressed allophone of and . transcribes them as , but this article uses for simplicity. Many scholars transcribe them as . * occurs only in the word wîe 'wedges'. * tends to be merged with into . * is lengthened to before . * is weakly rounded, and could be more narrowly transcribed as or . For this reason, it is sometimes transcribed . Mid * contrasts with only in the minimal pair pers 'press' – pers 'purple'. * Before the sequences , the and contrasts are neutralized in favour of the long variants and , respectively. * The schwa occurs as an allophone of unstressed and . In some words, such as vanaand 'this morning', is also realized as schwa . * Many speakers merge with into . * occur only in a few words. Open * As a phoneme, occurs only in some loanwords from English, such as pêl 'pal', as well as in some words such as vertrek 'departure'. It also occurs as a dialectal allophone of before , most commonly in the former Transvaal and Free State provinces. * As a phoneme, occurs only in some loanwords from English (such as grênd 'grand'), as well as before in some words. It also occurs as an allophone of before and the sequences . * are sometimes transcribed with simpler symbols ,For example by . but the former set of symbols is phonetically correct. * In the former Transvaal province, is realized as rounded . In extreme cases, this sound may be as high as . realization of merge with ?|date=May 2015}} * In some words, such as hamer, short is in free variation with long , despite the fact that the spelling suggests the latter vowel. In some words, such as laat, the pronunciation with short occurs only in the colloquial language. In some other words, such as aambeeld 'anvil', the pronunciation with short is already a part of the standard language. Nasalized vowels In some instances of the sequence (where stands for 'vowel'), is realized as nasalization (and lengthening, if the vowel is short) of the preceding vowel. This nasalization is stronger in some speakers than others, but there also are speakers that retain the and keep the original length of the preceding vowel. * The sequence in words such as dans is realized as . In monosyllabic words, this realization is the norm. * The sequence in more common words (such as Afrikaans) is realized as either or . In less common words (such as Italiaans) is the usual pronunciation. * The sequence in words such as mens is realized as . * The sequence in words such as guns is more often realized as than . For speakers with the merger, these transcriptions are to be read as and , respectively. * The sequence in words such as spons is realized as . analyze the pre- sequences as phonemic short vowels . Diphthongs * The scholar Daan Wissing argues that is not a phonetically correct transcription, and that is more accurate. In his analysis, he found that makes for 65% of the realizations, while the other 35% of realizations were monophthongal, namely , and . * may be realized in four ways: ** Falling diphthongs . Sometimes the first element is somewhat lengthened: . ** Rising diphthongs . These variants don't seem to appear word-finally. The sequence is commonly realized as or, more often , with realized as breathy voice on the diphthong. ** Indeterminate diphthongs , which may occur in all environments. ** Monophthongs, either short or somewhat lengthened . The monophthongal realizations occur in less stressed words, as well as in stressed syllables in words that have more than one syllable. In the latter case, they are in free variation with all of the three diphthongal realizations. In case of , the monophthongal also appears in unstressed word-final syllables. ** The diphthongal realizations may have a close onset: . * There is not a complete agreement about the dialectal realization of in the Boland area: ** According to and De Villiers,Cited in . The preview on Google Books makes it unclear whether De Villiers' book is "Afrikaanse klankleer. Fonetiek, fonologie en woordbou" or "Nederlands en Afrikaans", as both are cited at the end of Lass's chapter. they are close monophthongs, long , }} according to , short , }} according to De Villiers. ** According to , they are centralized close-mid monophthongs , }}, which do not merge with and . * There is not a complete agreement about the realization of in standard language: ** According to , it is realized as . Its onset is sometimes unrounded, which can cause it to merge with . ** According to , is realized as either rising or falling , with the former realization being the most common. The monophthongal realization is very rare or doesn't occur at all. * Most often, has an unrounded offset. For some speakers, the onset is also unrounded. That can cause to merge with , which is considered non-standard. * occur mainly in loanwords. Long diphthongs The long diphthongs (or 'double vowels') are phonemically sequences of a free vowel and a non-syllabic equivalent of or . They are . tends to merge with , but they are always spelled differently: the former as , the latter as . 'False' diphthongs In diminutives of monosyllabic nouns ending in , the vowels (but not when is followed by ) are realized as closing diphthongs . In the same environment, the sequences are realized as , i.e. as closing diphthongs followed by palatal nasal. Note that the diphthong in practice is realized the same as the phonemic diphthong . Consonants Obstruents * All obstruents at the ends of words are devoiced (a final becomes ). * are unaspirated. * According to some authors,For example . is actually an approximant . * may be somewhat more front before front vowels; the fronted allophone of also occurs in diminutives ending in ''-djie'' and ''-tjie''. * occur only in loanwords. * is most often uvular, either a fricative, or a voiceless trill - the latter especially in initial position before a stressed vowel. Only this source mentions the trilled realization. : "White South African English is one of very few varieties to have a velar fricative phoneme (see ), but this is only in words borrowed from Afrikaans (...) and Khoisan (...). Many speakers use the Afrikaans uvular fricative rather than the velar." Many speakers of White South African English realize the marginal English phoneme as uvular . In Afrikaans, velar may be used in a few "hyper-posh" varieties, and it may also rarely occur as an allophone before front vowels in speakers with otherwise uvular . * is realized as a voiced velar stop in some environments. Sonorants * and assimilate their articulation to a following obstruent in many cases: ** Both become before , and before . ** merges into before dorsals ( ). It is realized as velar before and the allophone of , occur after ?|date=May 2015}} and as uvular before . * is velarized in all positions. This is especially noticeable non-prevocalically. * is most commonly realized as the alveolar trill , but voiced uvular fricative and the uvular trill may occur instead in some southern dialects. Trilled versions may be pronounced with single contact: , . See also * Dutch phonology References Bibliography * * * -elision and intersonorantic in Afrikaans |editor-last=van der Wouden |editor-first=Ton |year=2012 |title=Roots of Afrikaans: Selected Writings of Hans Den Besten |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |pages=79-93 |isbn=978-90-272-5267-8 }} * * * * * Further reading * * * * * * * * * * * Category:Language phonologies Phonology